Armies stumbled their blind and groping way through Peace.
Istvan winged among them, wreathed in chains and wondering. He was bone and wire, mud and poison... they were whatever they thought themselves to be, a strange cavalcade of self-concepts translated in one broken instant to something real. Pride in Simple Things was there, as was Lost Tableware and Wishes She Could Remember. The Tall One, and The Wants-To-Be Taller One. The Animal. The Animator of Dust.
Smilers, translated to the Susurration’s own level. Half a million of them.
Providence had become greater than itself: a maze of glass, molten when he wasn’t looking, the ghosts of trees hovering on the edge of memory. Mountainous skeletons slouched through the ashes, destroyers themselves destroyed. The walls of Barrio Libertad towered amidst the fading shades of a demolished skyline, exactly the same as they were in the normal world.
Beyond that, distances dissolved. The Great War lurked just beyond an unseen divide, as it had done since he was chained.
No sign of Edmund. No sign of the Man in Black.
No sign of Pietro.
Istvan couldn’t decide between dread or disappointment. He alighted on the misted ground, set a hand on the hilt of his knife; couldn’t draw it. “Edmund?” Glass whispered. Rain. Coffee. Old leather. Tendriled ripples, like waves on the ocean, somehow frantic. The Susurration, reeling at a blow struck by what it couldn’t understand.
Footsteps. Istvan turned.
Pietro hurtled across a garden path that hadn’t been there before, the pond behind him rippling as though from several thrown stones. <Pista,> he cried, <what have you done?>
Istvan stepped backwards and almost tripped over a park bench. <I –>
<They’re all gone, Pista. Torn away, to suffering – all alone, all removed, all gone.> He buried his face in Istvan’s collar, an embrace that shook. Dead leaves blew over the path. <Pista, they’ll be so unhappy. What have you done?>
Istvan hugged him back. He couldn’t help himself. <I’m sorry. I’m sorry, please, listen–>
<What are you allowing to happen? Pista, your chains! Don’t you know what will happen?>
That voice; that beautiful voice. Istvan blinked back tears. Oh, he missed him so much. <I do,> he said, <I do, and I’m sorry. Please, listen to me. It’s hopeless. You can’t finish what you’ve set out to do. There are so many plans drawn against you.>
The grip drew tighter. <I know.>
Providence had gone. There was only the park, now, deep in the grip of autumn... but the sun still shone, and not all of the leaves had fallen. They rustled, red and gold.
Istvan tried not to remember. Remembering only made it worse. <If you… if you surrender, give up all those people, perhaps…>
He trailed off. He stared at his hand, clasped around Pietro’s shoulder. Fleshed. Living. The usual pale grey of his sleeve now had proper blue in it, its piping gone brilliant scarlet. No shackles. <Perhaps… we…>
A whisper in his ear. <I can’t, Pista. You know I can’t.>
<But…>
<No. Not now.>
Istvan closed his eyes. <Please, don’t.>
<I should say the same to you,> came the soft reply. The embrace shifted: a brush against the back of his neck, fingers playing through his hair. <Oh, Pista… I should say the same to you.>
Istvan was the stronger of the two. Always had been. Broader. Taller. A duelist and brawler, with the scars to prove it. He could escape any time he wanted.
Any time.
Where was Edmund?
Pietro broke away. <You deny me?>
Istvan refocused. “I…”
<Oh, Pista, you hurl me away so easily before another?> Delicate fingers caressed the scarred side of his chest, his neck, his face. The voice trembled. <Am I really such a burden? Am I really so terrible that you would rather be rid of me?>
Istvan tried to close those fingers in his. “No, Peti, I–”
Pietro drew back, clutching at his breast. <You would rather see me dead.>
“No!” Istvan reached out a hand… and froze, staring at bloodied bone, bound and shackled in blazing calligraphy. Oh, God.
Oh, God.
<I’m more cherished to you, dead.>
Istvan caught his wrist. <That isn’t true, Peti. That isn’t true!>
A shell burst between them. Istvan reeled backwards, blinded and then buried, mud oozing through his bones. Something rolled over him; a heavy, ugly thing, steel that screamed; crushing – and then he breached the surface, gasping, and it was a waste, all of it, no trees left and a severed hand lying crab-like beside him, blown off at the wrist. It had a ring on.
<You’re letting it all happen again! You don’t care about me! You want to be loosed, so it can all happen again!>
Istvan floundered. He couldn’t find him. Whose hand? Where was he? <Peti!>
He tumbled into a trench, wire ripping at his uniform. The mud stung, caustic with the residue of a gas attack, wisps swirling at his landing. Not tear gas. Phosgene. This was phosgene. He struggled to his feet, slipping. The shock of another strike hurled him sideways.
Something soft. Wet.
<You drove me to it,> said the dead man, slumped, shrapnel-torn, against the barricades. His eyes were soft and brown, flecked with yellow, irises ringed with a darkness like oak. <It was your fault, Pista. Your fault.>
Istvan scrambled away, his front smeared with blood. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. He could… he could go flying later, he could hide, he could…
Something. Oh, God, something.
He held up his hands, chains dragging in the mud. <Peti, I – I know what you are, you’re not–>
<I’m not what? Worthy?>
<No!>
<I don’t want your help,> Pietro said. <I don’t want your remorse, or your remembrance. Your apologies. Your touch. I don’t want you at all. I never did. Remember what you are, Pista, before anything else.>
Artillery thundered.
Istvan staggered. Sat down, hard, on a worm-eaten ledge. <You can’t.>
Those soft eyes gazed at him, pity and hatred and pain. <Remember what you are.>
Edmund fled.
Chasms yawned beside him. Below him. Above him. Before and behind. Storm winds lashed his face. He stared down, at his feet, without trying to look down. He couldn’t – down would look back, and pull him under. It was water, he knew it. Like the lake. His shoes slipped on a knife-edge, a strand barely wide enough to balance, cutting into his soles.
There was a pun there. The worst pun.
Istvan hadn’t… he wouldn’t…
A shadow fell overhead. Edmund skidded, backpedaled, and dove away as one of Shokat Anoushak’s terrors spun into the ground, crumpling, seams bursting, rotors snapping off, mantis claws curving like descending sickles, its scream reduced to a labored, moaning howl. Its tail stabilizer was gone.
A pale horror plunged after it. Before it. Veered around at an impossibly sharp angle, ripped a long, jagged, sparking gash through its metallic flesh – and shot away, turning a barrel roll and then vanishing into the storm. Grinning. Laughing. Violence for the sake of violence: gleeful, prancing, and delivered with the explosive brutality of a bronco. Nothing personal, but nothing better.
Istvan.
He was frightening enough standing still. He was frightening enough in his right mind.
“Edmund, do you know what you mean to unleash? You’ve seen it, Edmund, all those years ago, but perhaps you’ve forgotten?”
Another flier crashed down. The woods caught fire. Edmund tripped on a root that hadn’t been there before, tumbling down a riverbank as he held onto his satchel for dear life, stones ripping the skin from his hands.
He couldn’t breathe. It felt like he’d been running forever.
Laughter, somewhere above. “Shall I show it to you again, Edmund?” Thunder through the canopy; vulture’s wings arrowed across the stars. “Shall I spark your memory?”
The Susurration had gotten to him.
Istvan was drunk.
He was drunk, and he struck with surgical precision.
Edmund scrambled away from the flash of a knife.
Istvan covered his eyes as another shell struck.
He never had choices. He was what he was: all else flowed from that, irredeemable. There was nothing he could do. Even his face was twisted, and the wire that followed him. He deserved to be hated. He did.
What would Pietro have said, had he known what he was now? What he had become?
Remember what you are, Pista.
Before everything else. Before anything else.
I can honestly say that I don’t know where I’d be without you.
The last mud pattered down around him. Istvan whirled and threw his knife.
It thudded into Pietro’s shrapnel-torn chest. His heart. A cleaner end than what had really killed him, so very long ago.
“I’m a doctor,” Istvan said. English. A language he and Pietro had never shared. A language he had learned later, from conquerors and jailers. A language less dear and less powerful. He tugged at the band on his arm, the red cross he always carried. “I’m a doctor, and Pietro knew that. If you mean to use his memory to keep me from helping others, as a doctor ought, then you’re not even close to representing the man he was.”
The Susurration – it was the Susurration – looked down at the handle. Touched it, as though it couldn’t believe it. Didn’t fall. <This is how you help others, Pista?>
Istvan gestured at the battlefield. “This is how you win my sympathy?”
<You are what you are.>
“Yes. I am. I am your only ally and advocate, regardless of all that you’ve done, because you were brought here unjustly, trapped, and abandoned. I tried to speak for you at the conference. I tried to argue against what we mean to do now. I am trapped and chained, like you, and I am offering you one last chance to surrender. Give up those people you’ve imprisoned, and I’ll see to it that the victors aren’t the only ones who dictate what comes next.”
Pietro brushed at his chest, fingers coming away scarlet. <I can’t save you, then,> he said, wondering. <Pista, I tried. I tried so hard.>
Istvan stepped toward him, slowly, reminding himself: it wasn’t Pietro. It wasn’t.
It wasn’t.
“Please. Even if this plan works, people will be hurt. Your people.”
<You’ve taken them all away from me.>
“They’re still yours, aren’t they?” Another step. “You care for them, don’t you?”
<I would keep them safe forever, if I could.>
“Then let them go.”
Half the distance. A quarter of the distance. The mud clung to his shoes and sucked at the chains he dragged behind him. The guns seemed to have fallen silent. Pietro gazed at him, unmoving. Blood now soaked the entire front of his jacket.
Istvan reached out a hand, pretending it wasn’t shaking as badly as it was. “If you care for them, let them go.”
<How did you resist me?>
Istvan stopped. He shouldn’t have thrown the knife. He shouldn’t have. Why had he done that? Oh, God, there was so much blood.
He struggled to find words. Couldn’t. Looked away. “Pietro… my Peti, when he…” English wasn’t good enough, not for this; Istvan switched back to German. <He would have never said such things to me. Never, no matter how we quarreled. That isn’t love – and he loved me, just as I loved him. Just as I’ll always love him.>
<You’ve replaced him.>
<No.>
<Replaced me!>
Istvan lunged. Before he could think. Before he could hesitate.
He grabbed at the knife handle and drove the blade deeper, twisting, an agony burning in his own chest. <You will not do that to me again. You will not!>
<He’ll hate you,> Pietro hissed, <He’ll run from you, your Man in Black. He did once, and now, when he sees the full measure of what you are…> A chuckle. It gurgled in his throat. <He won’t want you near him ever again.>
Istvan stared at him. Edmund. Edmund was here, too. Edmund hadn’t ever faced such a foe before, and he was alone.
The Susurration was stalling.
“I like to think we’re better friends than that,” Istvan said.
He tore out the knife.
The sound was terrible. It always was. Memory bubbled from the wound, glassy, congealing.
“In fact,” he added, wiping the blade on his uniform hem, “I think he would have liked you. He loves books, you know. Dreadful ones. You could have formed a club.”
A roar on the horizon. Incoming shells whistled.
Oh, Peti. It was high time this was over.
Istvan took wing.
“The worst is living with what you’ve done,” Istvan said, still grinning that deathly grin. He struck: once, twice, steel flashing faster than Edmund should have been able to follow.
Edmund jerked his head out of the way just in time to keep his left eye. The tread assembly of the overturned tank slid away with a crash, interior wheels spinning. Edmund ran around it and came face-to-skull with the specter again. Ducked.
The blade scored his cheek.
Couldn’t spend time. He couldn’t spend any more time. Couldn’t move any faster.
Couldn’t escape.
Istvan leered at him. “How is it, living with what you’ve unleashed?”
Edmund backed up against the tank, holding tight to his pocket watch. Don’t. He needed all the time he could get. There were people that needed it. He couldn’t spend it.
“You’re not like this,” he tried, “I know you’re not like this.”
“Oh, I’m not talking about me,” the ghost replied. He flicked the blood from his knife. It spattered across Edmund’s jacket. “I’m talking about you. The Hour Thief himself! You’re the man who decides who gets all the time and who doesn’t, aren’t you?” He leaned in closer, the stench of poison gas burning Edmund’s nostrils. “Who gave you the right?”
The book was just sitting in the vault.
He was curious. It wasn’t a crime to be curious.
What if it worked? At least one other person had done it. What if it really, actually worked?
Really all of forever…
Such a good idea at the time. Such a good idea. Since then, he’d heard it argued that the universe might never end, only cool into a dark and dead expanse of drifting ashes.
Edmund fought down the old panic. Not now. Please, not now. “No one gave me the right.”
“No one,” Istvan echoed. “No one… but you.”
“Istvan…”
“You took it,” the specter continued, leaning closer still, close enough that Edmund shivered. Poisonous mists swirled around him, obscuring the forest, the river, the sky. “You didn’t want to be like the rest of them.”
Edmund’s fingers slipped on his watch. He couldn’t breathe. “Istvan, stop it.”
“Small. Weak. Withering.”
“Istvan!”
“Finite.”
The mist swallowed him. He fell into dust. Choked on dust. Tried to claw his way out, tried to reach for the hands that sought him, but everything he saw turned to dust. Everyone. It smelled like the archives – his bloody dust obsession, Istvan had called it, and he was right – and now there was nothing but the records, words written and rewritten in fading ink, illustrations of ancient ruin, paper that crackled and fell to pieces in his hands.
And her.
She plummeted toward him on a beast of her own making, its harness jangling, sword and quiver buckled at her belt. Dozens of braids whipped behind her, jet-black, capped in gold, each one longer than she was tall. Bright green, those eyes, almost glowing. Mad.
Shokat Anoushak.